I posted last summer how a good trail camera can provide important information in the war against deer... like where they enter your garden from and at what time.

Buying a motion activated trail camera would be the easy way to get started collecting deer data, but not nearly as much fun as building one from scratch.

LuridScience.com has an excellent step by step guide to hacking a motion sensor to work with a regular digital camera. I know it's a complex approach, but sometimes the road less traveled is where you learn some of the best hacking skills.

The main reason I wanted to mention this was to provide help for those who might be trying to build a motion activated deer deterrent that makes use of digital coyote sounds.

In the spirit of full disclosure I'd like to say that I have not actually used the above motion activated deer deterrent. The only reason I'm posting about it is because I have such a huge issue with their atrocious product description that in my opinion is bordering on being deceptive.

The first red flag was the part where they make use of "proprietary technology, developed and field tested by a Ph.D. and author of several books". Why not list a few of these books or even the man or woman with the so called Ph.D.? The word "proprietary" gets built upon a bit more in the next paragraph when they state how the device when triggered issues a "user-adjustable radio frequency noise and a bright L.E.D. light". It only takes a few minutes of reading the reviews on Amazon to realize the "proprietary, user-adjustable radio frequency noise" is nothing more then a simple FM radio that can be tuned to whatever station is available in your area.

I think this product could be effective if all you need to do is protect a small area, but it also might not work at all, or your deer might figure out the sound of a radio isn't all that deadly or even un-natural in an urban setting. One of the first things we tried was an old radio being left on a talk station out in the garden and it didn't seem to scare anything. A few years ago one of our neighbors tried the same thing on a pumpkin patch and ended up losing most of the crop. Insert joke about deer not liking a certain type of talk radio here.

The above contraption is a Clover trap, named after the guy who dreamed it up.

It's basically a frame just big enough for a deer with heavy nylon meshing stretched on all three sides and the top. I would imagine some scrap chain link fence material might also do the job, but make it harder to move.

One of the tricks is to bait the trap for several days without setting it. This way your deer get comfortable with walking all the way in. The trap gets triggered when the deer hit a stretch of fishing line that activates the door.

I know it's not very sportsman like, but it might be a good way to bring down exploding population numbers while at the same time providing several people with some good quality meat.

Image credit goes to the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Alberta in Canada.

There are several digital predator gadgets out there that will simulate just about any sound you can imagine so that hunters can lure a choice prey into their view.

The problem is price. Most of the high end units can cost anywhere from 400 to 800 dollars! That's why I'm posting about the device above. It's only 20 dollars plus shipping and has a setting called "coyote serenade".

I know it would take some tinkering, but it seems possible to maybe hack one of those driveway alert systems to trigger the coyote sound when the motion sensor is activated.

I killed my first deer a couple of weeks ago and he tasted great!

Got all excited that it was a buck although I would have prefered a doe for obvious population reasons. I'm pretty sure it was the same one I had cornered in the chicken pasture about a month ago. The little guy didn't learn and jumped right back into the pasture like it was some kind of weird rerun of a TV show, but this time I was ready and regular deer season was in full swing.

It took my wife and I a lot less time dressing this one out compared to her first kill a couple of years ago.

Wouldn't you know she killed her second deer the very next day smack dab in the middle of our main garden. Yes....her buck was bigger than mine and hers went down with an almost grace compared to my sloppy job.

We spent the next few days stewing up the bones and feasting on sweet potato fed venison.

It's a good feeling to have an extra 50 pounds of pasture fed meat in the freezer and the local population thinned out, but I'm under no illusions that we really put a dent in the huge number of deer around here. We see the tracks every day and could no doubt kill several more if we put some time into it, but why bother when they come literally to your front door.

Can you kill a deer on your own property without a hunting permit?

If you ask 10 people in my area you just might get 10 different answers.

Yes, you can kill a deer on your own property in the state of Virginia without a hunting license, but only during hunting season and only within the limits set forth by the fish and wildlife people.

Image credit goes to Ian McMurchy from RandyWakeman.com, who has an excellent article on wounding ballistics that I found very informative and well written.

Youtube user rchopp had some luck recently using the above driveway alert system to keep deer out of his garden.

He simply put the receiver in a ziplock bag and hung it next to the motion detection unit near his garden.

Since our deer pressure is extreme I would consider making a modification that allowed one to switch the alert noise to something more harsh and scary, or better yet make the alert also trigger a mechanical gizmo that would activate and provide motion for a minute or two.

Expect to pay 30 dollars unless you catch it on sale.

Last week I posted about missing a legal opportunity to kill a deer in our garden by not having a bow and arrow handy.

Another tool to have in that line of thought would be a muzzle loading black powder rifle.

These weapons have their own window of time during the year when one can kill a deer and still be within the bounds of the law. A muzzle loader will cost at least a few hundred dollars and some time to learn the skill of how to load this older firearm technology.

Image credit goes to SnapShutter at twincity photos.com.

Last week I walked out to the garden after lunch and caught a mother deer and her son munching on our lush bed of parsley.

They saw me almost right away and bolted.

The doe took off one direction and the buck went a slightly different route and ended up stuck between two fences about 8 feet apart that we use as a chicken pasture moat.

He kept trying to jump over and through the 5 foot high fence but only bounced back to the ground each time.

Too bad our special kill permit had already expired...or if I had been more prepared I could have legally killed it with a bow and arrow at this time of year. Being prepared would mean obtaining the equipment and learning how to use it, a project we might get around to in the future.

He must have figured out that jumping over the fence at the end allowed enough clearance to make the jump. By the time I went back to the trailer for my camera he was gone.

With a little luck his mom will decide our parsley is too dangerous and look elsewhere for a snack. Image credit goes to Do You Have Horns.blogspot.com for the awesome abstract drawing of a mother deer and her son.

These new mechanical deer deterrent motors just passed the 6 month mark with no signs of letting up.

The motors are rated at 12 volts AC, but I've been using a 9 volt adapter which makes it go even slower.

Round head screws work better for securing the motor to a board. I started out using more flat head drywall screws and lost a motor when the support arm got caught up in the space between the screw and the motor.

You'll want a screw that's long enough to bite into the wood but not too long so that it pokes through on the top. Save yourself some time looking through hardware bins and get a variety package at a Dollar General store for $1.50. It has the size you need leaving 68 various screws for any future experiments or deer deterrent projects.